


here for you.

by Quecksilver_Eyes



Series: Narnia Musings [61]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:49:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27301468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quecksilver_Eyes/pseuds/Quecksilver_Eyes
Summary: the last harvest before a narnian winter is a golden, revelled thing. the dryads talk to their king, with soft hands and sun-ripe fruit.
Series: Narnia Musings [61]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1714795
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	here for you.

there’s something nestled  
in these scars  
in these teeth  
in this soil and hidden amongst these leaves; loved –

something like  
the world and all this Narnia  
cradled in these calloused hands  
and held in our roots;

how deep into the forests will you venture, oh King of Narnia?

Your world is dipped in golden threads, spun high above your head in between what breathes and aches underneath your feet, bare on this soil, and your hands, warm and rough on all our bark, and all our lives intertwined at the tips of your fingers. You stumbled into this world, see, with all that was rotting your world frothing at your mouth and buried deep within the pit of you, half drowning in that fur coat – and half in her smile and her needle-teeth.

You came into our world coated with stolen sugar, and we came into yours coated in leaded ice. Together, we unhinged our jaws and our hands and all our lives and swallowed the witch whole, see, until the world bloomed, again, in your sister’s hair and dripping from your siblings’ cheeks. We’ve spun this Narnia about you, and the way you’ve unstuck your fingers and your cheeks and your lips, until it lay golden and sluggish; slow underneath your sister’s sun. Our leaves have not yet started wilting, and your smile has not yet hardened with each winter’s breath, like the rise and fall of our chests.

Your sister is canine teeth and torn skirts; iron-cast and laughter in our arms, like something from a nursery rhyme born of a mother with soft hands and a softer voice – something forged of a dream or perhaps a memory, too fuzzed for you to still keep strung up between your mouth and your chest – or perhaps like something hidden in a witch’s nightmares. Or perhaps the nightmare goes something like this:

This sword is too heavy for you. This world sits atop your brother’s shoulders and tangled in your sisters’ tears. Around you, spring draws near and tight around her glass-shard skin, the way it digs into her palms and her throat. Around you, we sprout from the witch’s bones and the cracks in her skin until she lies, gold-spun and breathless; doomed; in the tangle of us; until you lie, blood-stained and fireflower-alive in your family’s arms.

This world doesn’t spin, see. This world stays suspended and unmoving and alive stretched across the fourfold canopy of you, with all its stars and all its laughter contained within. This autumn is stitched across your hands and into our fruit – heavy and sun ripe and still clinging to your smile. Your hands are smeared with the sugar of us, and rough with our bark, and you dance, barefoot and untrembling and alive in this autumn’s last harvest.

On the fields of Beruna, the rose dryads still play amongst glass shards, with their teeth as sharp as the Queen’s, with their laughter tangled in this grass, and you smile, still; fruit-heavy and world tangled and alive in our forests, the Just King treads our ground, barefoot.

how far into the forests will you venture?


End file.
